Defects in developmental mechanisms during embryogenesis can result in congenital cardiac anomalies. Understanding normal heart development mechanisms has been limited by the inability to simultaneously detect anatomic and physiologic changes in these small (e.g., less than two millimeters) organs during substantially normal development. For example, conventional systems may not have been able to simultaneously assess structure and function of a beating embryonic heart in vivo. A beating embryonic heart has conventionally been a challenge to image in vivo because it has small dimensions and is moving.
Gated cardiac imaging involves acquiring image data according to a trigger associated with the heart cycle, whether the heart cycle is naturally occurring and/or paced. Acquiring images at specified points in time in the heart cycle facilitates mitigating motion artifacts by acquiring images when the heart tissues are not moving and/or at consistent points during the cycle. Medical imaging modalities including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) have used gating to image beating adult hearts. However, these conventional systems have lacked the resolution to study pre-septated embryonic hearts in vivo. Similarly, optical projection tomography (OPT) lacks the ability to image in vivo, and confocal microscopy lacks the field of view and depth range for imaging the embryo in vivo.